This Mentored Research Scientist Award (K01) will enable the candidate, a developmental psychologist, to become an independent researcher in developmental psychopathology, with a focus on emotion processing in low-income children and families. Career goals are to explain how emotional competence relates to readiness for school and to identify factors that influence the development of emotional competence in this underserved population, with an emphasis on implications for prevention. Research goals are to describe emotional competence in low-income preschool and kindergarten-age children during the transition to school and to examine whether preschool emotional competence predicts kindergarten school readiness, including social competence, mental health functioning (internalizing and externalizing behavior), academic knowledge and school skills. The proposed short-term longitudinal study involves assessing 120 low-income preschool children's emotional competence via teacher reports of emotion regulation, interview assessments of child emotion knowledge and understanding, and live observations of emotional expression, regulation, and social engagement in Head Start classroom settings. School readiness will be assessed in a multi-method, multi-informant follow-up after children transition to kindergarten. The candidate will complete rigorous training with Ronald Seller, Ph.D., an expert in developmental psychopathology research, and co-mentors with expertise in emotional competence (Susanne Denham, Ph.D.), low-income children's school readiness (David Arnold, Ph.D.), and clinical implications of such work (Susan Dickstein, Ph.D.). Training goals are to learn new statistical skills (e.g., Hierarchical Linear Modeling); gain expertise both in designing longitudinal studies with high-risk children and families and in conducting methodologically intensive research in school settings; and acquire technical training in observational research (from Roger Bakeman, Ph.D., Deborah Capaldi, Ph.D., and Carroll Izard, Ph.D.). With such specialized training, the candidate will be prepared in future research to test a comprehensive developmental model of emotional competence, examining family influences and using sophisticated methods (e.g., microanalytic analyses) to investigate the significance of individual differences in emotional competence for low-income children's mental health and school readiness. [unreadable] [unreadable]